Nail Art Challenge #5 - Pick a Muppet, any Muppet

A Muppet-Tastic mani made up with monster blue, shades of lilac, lilac and blue glitter, and googly eyes.

I am a MASSIVE Muppet fan and from moment one I knew I was doing my very favorite Muppet, Gonzo. Not the most amazing likeness but I think it does the job in a gestural sort of way. Once I remembered I had a stash of googly eyes there was no stopping me!

The polish fought me a bit but a great deal of that was simple time constraint. I didn't want to put a layer of topcoat between details so I knew I had to do it all in one shot.

Initially I had been worried that chopping my nails so much shorter was going to lose me working space but I think this scaled out pretty much perfect. I only did this on the left hand as two Gonzos just doesn't make sense. *laughs*

I think the lilac and blue hex glitter was just the right detail to pull it together as a full mani. I had real doubts at how this was going to turn out as I was doing it but in all I'm really happy with it!

Did I mention the googly eyes?

Added bonus, this massive sinus infection (oh, I apparently had a massive sinus infection, by the way) has me so clogged up I didn't have to smell any of the remover or fresh polish!

Sick, ill, and other adjectives not related in any way to 90s rap

Picture: SOLENT

The plan for something like three days ago was to give a rundown of some of the neat makeup and beauty stuff I've picked up in recent days, but I got so sick starting Thursday that I don't want to get anywhere near my makeup or brushes, much less take detailed pictures of what I look like right now.

On the plus side uh, I'm finally playing around with my new (to me) netbook, and my hair is doing interesting things?

It just does this on is own. I wish I could harness the power of my roots because they are mighty!

Seriously though, I haven't forgotten about you and I've gotten some really neat stuff I want to share.

More when I'm  not glued to my bed, a teacup, and a box of tissues.

Yikes! Stripes!

I'll give you my horizontal stripes when you pry them out of my cold dead hands.

I may be "too petite" or "too curvy" for horizontal stripes by some measures, but I also have a pixie cut and elfin features, which I feel gets me a firm buy on a couple of the rules on account of my rather Gamine appearance.

From Wikipedia: The word gamine is a French word, the feminine form of gamin, originally meaning urchin, waif or playful, naughty child.

From me: in the 20th century it took on the implication of a small, slim, doe eyed, impish woman with a noticeably French (sometimes boyish) flare.  

Two of the most well known gamines are of course the Audreys.

Hepburn and Tautou, that is.

Their style is iconic, but just a tad too sweet for me, and anyway I'm talking about stripes here. When you're talking about gamine and stripes, you're talking about 50s/60s actress and tragic figure, Jean Seberg.

Jean Seberg in stripes (<-- that is a Google image search, go bask in the stripey goodness for a minute, check out all those homages, Madonna, Winona, Emma... I'll wait) is probably the single most definitive style influence of my last decade.

If I were limited to a single outfit for the rest of my life - a striped boatneck with slim but relaxed jeans would be pretty high up in the contenders.

March 2010 - I miss platinum hair just about every day, no joke

I've always had a soft spot for 60s style and cutting my hair off threw that into overdrive, so when I'm feeling like exploring the somewhat harder edges of Gamine I look to late 60s actress, Warhol muse, and also tragic figure - Edie Sedgwick.

Don't get me wrong, I dearly love me some Twiggy too, but for the goth girl in me - it'll always be Edie.

I've never gotten the hang of big earrings (I prefer bracelets), but a lifetime of cropped hair (contrasting roots and all), kohl, black leggings, and sack dresses would suit me just fine too.

On a related note: I've been going through old pics of myself this week and have noticed a distinct change in my eye makeup styling from the go-to look of my teens and twenties to now.

March 2003 - all hail the crappy webcam selfie!

I used to have a pretty adept hand at extremely heavy kohl and strong cut crease styles using little more than black liner and shadow (applied while commuting to college on a train every day, no less). When I started using the internet to research makeup I realised I had independently discovered many tricks commonly used to make small eyes look as large as humanly possible, yet I pulled it off with full, heavy black lining, which is usually said to shrink eyes.

Looking at the way I do makeup now I feel that I may have actually lost a few tricks along the way!

It's something I've been playing with lately and I've got a new concealer on the way so hopefully I'll have more to say on that (and maybe the gumption to take some closeups) later.